


she sees that she's a work of art

by orphan_account



Category: bare: A Pop Opera - Hartmere/Intrabartolo
Genre: Body Image, Comfort, F/F, I'm so sorry, Jason isn't dead, Painting, and badly written, this is ridiculously fluffy, v cheesy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8256325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ivy draws Nadia.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. Listen, this is trash. But there needs to be more Nadia/Ivy stuff, so here you go. This is gay and fluffy and emotional. I'm sorry.

Ivy draws Nadia.

She draws everyone--Nick, who lives in the apartment upstairs, Matt, smiling with his tie undone, Jason, the way he looks when he’s looking at Peter, Peter, sleepy and smug, Nadia Jr., burbling and gumming on bread. She draws herself, even, nude, with stretchmarks and messy hair. 

But Nadia is her favorite subject. She doodles Nadia in the margins of her art history textbook, paints Nadia on canvas and sometimes on her own arm, sketches Nadia for hours from memory, with as much detail as a still life. 

“Hey, um, Nads,” Ivy says. It’s a Tuesday, three in the morning, and the baby is finally asleep. Jason is lying on the couch, and Peter is lying on Jason. Nadia is sprawled on the floor, her head in Ivy’s lap, both of them tipsy on that cheap wine Matt brought Friday. “Can I show you something?”

Their apartment is terrible by most standards, but ridiculously nice for college students in New York. This is because Nadia gets paid really fucking well for those cello gigs and Ivy has a near-full scholarship for her online classes and and the elderly Mcconnells can’t exactly let their son live on the streets, imagine the scandal, so they provide a sizeable monthly sum. When they moved in, Ivy had insisted that she and Nadia get the biggest room, both for the space and the windows. There are dressers and a bed pushed into the corner and the rest of it is all Ivy’s studio. Nadia isn’t complaining. She literally wakes up surrounded by art. Even the walls, Ivy has painted, swirling, soothing murals of ocean and galaxy and pale stormcloud.

The thing Ivy wants to show her is propped against the bed, in a black garbage bag. Ivy tugs off the bag, hands it to her. Nadia lets out a little puff of air. 

“Oh, Ivy,” she says. 

The painting is ridiculously beautiful--she can see the skill Ivy’s cultivated through practice, through age, through classes--and it’s of Nadia. The canvas is 11x14 and there must be dozens of Nadias on it, minimalistic in black watercolor with dashes of red and brown, yet so impossibly expressive. Nadias bleeding into Nadias. Some just faces--one of them screaming, contorted with rage, another arching her eyebrows. Some torsos--stretching, eating cake, crying into her hands. Some full figures--dancing, sleeping and vulnerable, playing the cello, laughing cross-legged. There’s a deep, reverent grace to all of them, and Nadia’s throat closes up. This is her, she knows, yet the girl portrayed seems deeply unfamiliar. 

“Ivy,” she says again, and God, she’s not going to cry, what’s wrong with her--“Ivy.”

Ivy’s ears are turning pink. “Uh, so, I, um, I kindasorta want to submit it to my art professor? If that’s okay with you? It’s kind of personal and um, it’s okay if you don’t like it, orifyou’renotcomfortable. Sorry. Yeah.”

“This is beautiful. And I don’t mind you turning it in--I don’t know anyone in your art class anyways. But Ivy, I’m not--” Nadia shakes her head, distraught. “I’m not beautiful. I’m so--flattered--but why? Why do you draw me like this?”

Ivy stares at Nadia, her expression shifting from embarrassed to indignant. “This is what you look like, you idiot! This is how I see you! Not--not beautiful--Nadia, you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”

Nadia blinks, cradling the portrait. “Ivy. That’s really gay.”

“Oh my god,” and then Ivy’s on the bed, curled into Nadia’s shoulder, half laughing and half crying. “I hate you.”

“Mmm.” Ivy smells like paint and strawberries. 

“Listen, Nadia, you’re really fucking gorgeous, okay?”

“My charming personality is influencing your sight.”

“Independent of your regrettable personality, you’re really fucking gorgeous,”

“Bullshit. That’s not what you thought in high school.” She doesn’t want to get emotional about this, it’s so stupid, but she can feel her breath hitching. 

“In high school,” says Ivy slowly, “I told you what magazines told me, what my mom told me, what your mom told you, what you told me. I told you that you were fat and so you were despicable. I saw a weakness and I aimed for it. Like you and your fucking slutshaming. I was slutty and you were--still are--fat. But those aren’t despicable qualities. From the beginning I thought you were beautiful, you know. I lied to you, Nadia. Every part of you is beautiful. I paint what I see.”

Ivy kisses like velvet, like a prayer, down the column of Nadia’s throat and over her invisible collarbone, teases off her shirt and then ghosts her lips over Nadia’s heavy breasts, over her swell of stomach, over her generous love handles. Her fingers skim thighs dimpled with cellulite, swerve over broad hips and up soft shoulders, and stop to brush the bow of Nadia’s mouth. “I paint what I see,” she says again, and Nadia’s tears fall into her hair. 

“You’re gonna be a fucking Picasso,” mumbles Nadia. Ivy climbs onto her lap, pushing the painting to safety, and kisses her on the lips, sweet and deep. She says as Ivy pulls back, “That was even gayer. I’ll have you know that this is a good Christian neighborhood and I’m afraid your wild lesbian ways are corrupting me--”

“I love you,” Ivy says to shut her up, and because it’s true. It’s true, it’s true, it’s true, and she stamps this precious honesty into Nadia’s skin with each press of her mouth.

Later, when she wakes up, Nadia whispers to a sleeping Ivy, “I love you so much it hurts,” and Ivy, not so asleep after all, says, “Good. Also, gay.” Nadia’s laughter is the most beautiful sound ever heard, museum-worthy, but Ivy kind of likes keeping it to herself.

~~~

**Author's Note:**

> Beautiful Libby wrote a much better very similar fic here that I highly recommend reading: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8254283
> 
> This is literally the first fanfiction I've ever written, so comments/kudos are appreciated!


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